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THESE ARE MY IDOLS IN LIFE
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PROFESSOR GABRIEL OYIBO
He was a noise maker in the class and the punishment for that was solving intricate mathematical problems. Cracking his brain to beat his teacher at his game, Oyibo developed an ingenious formula that has since propelled him into the rarified world of Mathematics and Aeronautics. Here is the story of the 52-year old professor Gabriel Oyibo, born in Idah and educated in Nigeria before venturing to the United States for higher academic accomplishments. Today, he is one of those nominated for the 2002 NOBEL Prize for Physics.
By Laolu Akande, New York
IN his secondary school days, they used to call him Calculus, because of his mathematical prodigy.
But Gabriel Oyibo is the kind of guy who gets into trouble in school and yet very brilliant among his peers. His colleagues viewed the situation as though things came to him easily, but a look at his life history reveals the hard work, the grit and a keen sense of his past that has defined this outstanding scholar.
When he was in form two at the St. Augustine College, Kabba he was caught making noise in class and he was punished for it. His punishment was after being given an end number, he was to add a large number together. He did it very well, although he felt it was pretty tedious. The following week, and the week after, he was always caught making noise and he got the same punishment.
When he got the punishment the third time, he felt he needed to find a way to ease the burden. That was how he discovered a formula of doing it.
Oyibo recalls: "If I was adding any number from one to an unknown number, and the teacher gave me N i.e. the end number, then I can give him the answer thus: n divided by 2 and multiplied by n + 1"
Being a mission school, Oyibo's teacher was a white man. He called Oyibo to his office after he heard of the formula he had found.
Oyibo recalls the conversation: "He called me to the office and said: 'Do you realise what you have done?' I said yes, I found a solution to your punishment. He said 'no, no, do you realise the significance of that solution?' I said no, not really. Then he said 'does the name Gauss mean anything to you?' I said no; it is not an African name. He said 'Gauss along with Newton, and Euler are considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all times. Gauss solved the same problem you solved and that was how he became famous.'
"I was stunned. My mates began to hear about it and one thing led to another and they gave me the nickname of Calculus. By my third year, I was helping 5th year students in Add. Maths."
Gabriel Oyibo is now being considered for a Nobel Prize in Physics. Although he is not the first African or Nigerian to be so nominated, his nomination is sure momentous. No fewer that seven top American scholars are backing his nomination based on a work that even the United States Senate and several US government agencies have had cause to seek audience with him. Some other Nigerian physicists known to have been nominated in the past include Professor Oluwadamilare Awe and Professor Madumezie, both of the Physics Department of the University of Ibadan.
None of the two are, however, Oyibo's contemporary, as they both made their marks in the subject starting from the 70s to the early 90s. Oyibo, on the other hand, graduated from the Ahmadu Bello University in 1975 and proceeded to the US, where he earned his Ph.D. degree at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University in 1981.That university was founded in 1821.
Oyibo, an Igala man, was born in Idah, in the present Kogi State in 1950 into a polygamous family. He recalls that there were about 20 children in all in the household, although his father, who had three wives, actually had 13 children of his own. But as typical of most African households of the time, children of relatives and cousins were also in the household.
Oyibo is married to an African-American woman, since 1981, and they have three children; two of whom are already in university also studying Mathematics, like their father
The world-class mathematical physicist places a lot of store on his African background. Actually he links up with, in a spiritual way, with other successful scholars like Professor Wole Soyinka, Dr. Sanya Onabamiro, whose Onabamiroid chemical formula he still recalls, Late Prof. Ayodele Awojobi and Dr. Tai Solarin. He refers to Fela too as having played a role in inspiring him.
He says it was from the elders and people like them that everything started for him: "This is not me, this is about our ancestors, respect the elders, the elders taught me, they were my real teachers. They traced our story from Egypt."
Listen to him further: "Onabamiro and Onabamiroid did not just come up from out of nowhere. He had it in his ancestral gene. Nor did Awojobi shatter all the records at Imperial College by nothing. Nor did Wole Soyinka use the language of foreigners to beat them at their game. All these happened because there is a whole legacy from our ancestors."
He asserts that his God's Almighty Grand Unified Theorem - GAGUT -- can also be traced to the ancestors. He explained the bottom-line of GAGUT thus: "People like Albert Einstein credited the creation of the world to the Big Bang Theory. And before that, infact before the Bible, Africans then in Egypt encapsulated the story of creation in a stone named after the Pharaoh of the time called Shabakka stone. In that stone it was said that the world emerged from a 'roaring water waves of Nun. Nun being a place, could be heaven. And then the Bible talks about how the world was created by God's word."
He added: "My God Almighty's Grand Unified Theorem now unites all these together, proving that there is a link in all of them, because the word of God is that 'roaring water waves' and it is what the Big Bang Theory called the explosion. Mathematically, they are all waves. The word of God is waves."
Oyibo proves that commonality, by uniting Isaac Newton's universal gravitational and Maxwell's electromagnetic force fields with Einstein's General Relativity Force Fields, and the 'Strong and Weak forces' recently found by Professors Yang and Mills. The result is that whereas Dr. Einstein reduced the traditional five forces down to four by virtue of E=MC2. Professor Oyibo has reduced these four force fields down to one.
GAGUT is also known as the theory of everything. It is a general theorem with a mathematical basis or proof. Oyibo detailed the proof in his book, "Grand Unified Theorem" whose first edition sold out and the second edition was released last year. It is no surprise that the publishers of the book, Nova Science Publishers Inc. have published works of 10 other Nobel Prize winners.
According to Oyibo, "Einstein tried to solve the Unified Field Theory. And he was looking for this when he found his Special Relativity Theory, but he died without accomplishing the original goal. So everybody wanted to solve that problem in Mathematical Physics."
Generally, there are, as other scholars noted, several mathematical problems yet unsolved, especially because once a solution is found to one, it creates new problems. But Oyibo chose to finish Einstein's work.
He continued: "Einstein had hinted that he saw the solution in geometry. I took that hint seriously. I grew up learning and enjoying geometry. So I doubled my efforts and through my thesis and all the way my works led me to the solution. For instance in 1989-91, I solved what the Clay Mathematics Institute in Harvard regarded as one of the 7th toughest math's problem, i.e., the Navier-Stokes equations."
This was how his publishers described his body of academic works: "No other seeker after the solution to the Unified field problem articulated by Einstein has such a body of work upon which to credibly stake his claim to having actually discovered the "Holy Grail" of mathematical physics. Crowning an incredible career, which has included problem solving for NASA which their experts at MIT and other elite universities had deemed "impossible to solve", he has solved the problems which Einstein had dedicated the better part of his life towards solving."
Indeed there is one thing crucial to understanding Oyibo's personality. It is his keen sense of the history of his people, and by that he means Black people in general. And this shows in his storytelling skills. For instance as he recalls events of his school days, he often rolls into a hearty laughter that reflects a very memorable boyhood.
Oyibo believes the 'myth', that the current day Igalas, like Yorubas and several others in Nigeria today hailed from Egypt and were all deposited along the way in the great migrations from Egypt. He recalls being told by the elders that Alaafin Atiba, a famous Yoruba emperor, was part of that great migration.
Having traced his ancestry to Egypt, he showed how the study of Geometry is an African science, which began in Egypt. This is the same Geometry that Einstein had suggested would bear the solution to the Unified Field Theory.
"While in Egypt the elders developed Geometry in order to build the pyramids. They built the massive structure; they wanted to glorify God by doing something great. So the reason for the geometry is the pyramids. The pyramid is still the most impressive structure in the world today."
He recalled the words of an English writer Graham Hancook, who after visiting the pyramids was overwhelmed that he reached the conclusion that no human being is brilliant enough to construct the building, because there is no such building that matches the precision of the pyramids. Hancook concluded in his book the Fingerprints of the Gods, Oyibo recalls, that only the gods can do it. Which is another way, reasons Oyibo, to say, "our ancestors are gods."
Still reeling off stories the elders told him while he was a young boy, Oyibo submits that even Chemistry was invented as well by Africans. He said that was why African ancestors turned scrap into gold.
After having learnt so much from the elders, Oyibo later attended the St. Augustine College, Kabba, where he became famous for his grasp of Mathematics and how in 1965 he found a formula and was called Calculus. He recalled some of his old classmates who today are also scientists. Like Peter Sule, who he says is now a professor at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.. "Peter was my competition, very fierce competition then. He use to call me mad Calculus!
"That was one of the most exciting times of my life. I was viewed like a star. And then I started studying relativity, read about Albert Einstein."
Oyibo made a first grade in WASC and proceeded to the prestigious Offa Grammar School for his Advanced level, where he spent two years doing lower and upper six. He was the best student in Maths there. He remembers that the school had a very good libraray and the principal's name was Mr. Adelowo. Also while at Offa, he recalled how Shell/BP had a nationwide scholarship drive, where students were taken to Lagos for a test.
He recalls that himself, Peter Sule and James Fabunmi (who is also now US based professor at Maryland University) from Christ School Ado-Ekiti joined others from across the nation for the scholarship test/interview. Oyibo explains: "My memory is foggy now, but I think they were looking for people with aptitude in Maths. We were there at 40 Marina, Shell's office then."
He remembers that the Training Manager who ran the interview was a German by the name of Van Wanning.
"The first interview exercise was written, then we heard IQ test. We were not supposed to hear about the results but the German came and called me out of the crowd. Now all through the period we were in Lagos for the interview, Lagosians among us were making jest of those of us from up North, that we were just there for fun and that they were really better and such talk. They called us "Ara oke." You know candidates came from Kings College, Igbobi College, Government College, Ibadan, and other Government Colleges across the country. Lagosians never believed "Ara oke" will do well."
But they were sure in for a surprise. Oyibo went on: "When I was called, they thought I had flunked the test. It turned out my performance got attention and the German said what I did, they hadn't seen it before. But he first asked me: 'How do you think you did?' I said I did like others. I was wondering is this man telling me my performance was below the others. The he answered me and said, 'no, you did something unusual, and in effect I did not have to take the remaining parts of the interview, and was selected."
Afterwards, he got summer jobs, between 1972 to 75 with Shell while still completing his A' levels at Offa. He still recollects his job at Shell. "The Shell/BP office was at Freeman House, a 16-storey building, and I was on the 11th floor. I was paid well. I did geophysics work on Exploration floor. I was the only black guy on that floor, and then later someone else came who already had a degree. We were determining where oil could be found based on scan photos."
When he graduated at Offa, he worked briefly at the Broadcasting Corporation of Northern Nigerian in Kaduna, which was under the NBC as a technician. From there he went to Ahmadu Bello University in 1973 to study Mechanical Engineering. He graduated with a second class upper degree.
But Oyibo had some exhilarating experience at ABU with some of his teachers. He remembers in particular and with relish, one O.D.E George, who was then a Mathematics lecturer at the university.
Hear him: "Professor George came from Harvard and he really impacted my life. He was fascinating. He left a job with US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, to come and teach us at ABU. He was so taken to the subject that he would bring his car to the lecture venue and after the class he would forget to take the car with him!"
Recalling stories like that brought out the liveliness and playfulness in an otherwise academically efficacious being like Oyibo. He couldn't stop laughing as he tells the story, just as he left the listener no choice but to join in the laughter.
He left ABU to do his NYSC in Sapele, in the then Bendel State and then traveled to the US on several scholarships including a federal and state scholarship to resume his graduate studies at the Rensselaer, in upstate New York in 1977. He focused on Maths and Aeronautics for his Msc and Ph.D. and both degrees were in the bag by 1981.
Oyibo's focus was becoming sharper now, and he dared to walk where angels feared to thread.
At Rensselaer, one of the foremost educational institutions for the study of science and engineering, the Nigerian scholar submitted a thesis on Affine Transformation, the same Transformation used by Albert Einstein and another legendary scientist Henricks Lorentz, (the second winner of the Nobel prize for Physics,) to develop the special relativity theory, ie e=mc2.
He linked Affine Transformations dwells via mathematical application with aeronautics and how to build aircraft wings and weapons. He was easily awarded US federal scholarships both by the Defense Dept. and NASA, and soon became expert consultants to aircraft companies.
His academic output in this area was so overwhelming in the early 80s that in 1983, he had the highest number of articles in that field in a reputable learned journal of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, AIAA.
. Senior academic colleagues worked with him. Like Eugene Brunelle, who is reported to have himself shattered all the records at MIT, the ultimate school for science and technology in the US, and who also became one of the youngest professors of science engineering at Princeton, another ivy league university here. Other notable mathematicians with whom Oyibo worked, as he honed his skills, during his Ph.D. research included from CALTECH, another foremost technology university in the US, Japanese Henry Nagamatsu, German George Handelmann and Bob Loewy, all three expressed interest in his research focus of Affine Transformation.
Senior experts around the world have often subjected his discoveries to serious scrutiny and had always been found to be of world standards, even though areas of improvements have also been identified. But there are few people who would rather ignore him and pretend as though he was not breaking new grounds. Oyibo said he has faced rigorous questioning and there were times that he wished that Nigerian scholars like Chike Obi, Awojobi could be around at such conferences where he is often the only Black man.
But prestigious and reputable learned societies and associations like the European Mathematical Society, and the American Mathematical Society have reviewed his GAGUT and okayed it. And in several US, Canada and European University libraries, his books are on the shelves.
In some libraries the books are restricted or listed as reference materials that cannot be removed. At the Stanford University, another US ivy school, a search for book on GAGUT returned this response: "Sorry, the information on availability is restricted to personnel." So that even though the university has the book, access to it is controlled.
But Oyibo is concerned that there is yet no African university that has gotten copies of his work.
Oyibo has made numerous presentations on his finding at various academic fora across the world. But he still remembers one he attended in April 1985 very well.
"I made a presentation in Germany at the University of Aachen at a conference on aeronautics. I presented three papers on hodograph transformation and had the highest number of papers at the conference. I was the only Black there. I was introduced as a noted American mathematician. And jokingly I responded that I am African, expecting the audience to roar in laughter. But there was no such response. Everyone just kept quiet. I guessed that was no joke."
It was from this conference that he had to come home to Nigeria to go visit his ailing dad in Idah. The old man had prostrate cancer. But when he told his father about where he was coming from, the man simply sprung back to life.
"I told him I was just coming from Germany. He said to do what? I said to present papers to Germans. And then he started to jump. This was the same guy who had been reeling in pain before. People were saying did I bring him a million dollars? My dad answered them saying, 'he brought me more, he went to lecture the Germans.' It was our last encounter."
Oyibo senior died the following year on the 18th of April 1986 at the age of 67. But the mother, in her early 80s is still alive in Idah.
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DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JNR.
One of the world's best known advocates of non-violent social change strategies, Martin Luther King, Jr., synthesized ideas drawn from many different cultural traditions. Born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, King's roots were in the African-American Baptist church. He was the grandson of the Rev. A. D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church and a founder of Atlanta's NAACP chapter, and the son of Martin Luther King, Sr., who succeeded Williams as Ebenezer's pastor and also became a civil rights leader. Although, from an early age, King resented religious emotionalism and questioned literal interpretations of scripture, he nevertheless greatly admired black social gospel proponents such as his father who saw the church as a instrument for improving the lives of African Americans. Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays and other proponents of Christian social activism influenced King's decision after his junior year at Morehouse to become a minister and thereby serve society. His continued skepticism, however, shaped his subsequent theological studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and at Boston University, where he received a doctorate in systematic theology in 1955. Rejecting offers for academic positions, King decided while completing his Ph. D. requirements to return to the South and accepted the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
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PROFESSOR PHILLIP EMEAGWALI
During his three-decade career, Philip Emeagwali walked the line between the supercomputer and the Internet and along the way helped reinvent supercomputing.
GROWING UP IN AFRICA
Born in 1954, he had a modest beginning in a remote Nigerian village where he was declared a child math prodigy, a skill nurtured by the daily arithmetic drills given to him by his father. In 1967, the civil war in his country forced him to drop out of school at age 12. He was conscripted into the Biafran army at age 14. After the war ended, he completed his high school equivalency by self-study and came to the United States on a scholarship in 1974.
EMEAGWALI HELPED GIVE BIRTH TO SUPERCOMPUTER
After fifteen years of study and research in mathematics, physics and computer science, Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which has been called “supercomputing's Nobel Prize,†for inventing a formula that allows computers to perform fast computations --- a discovery that inspired the reinvention of supercomputers.
Emeagwali’s breakthrough in the speed of calculations made international headlines because until that time, it had been believed that it would be impossible to program thousands of processors to outperform supercomputers. Emeagwali’s discovery established the actuality that the collective power of thousands of processors could indeed be harnessed. This knowledge was the crucial turning point that inspired the reinvention of supercomputers to utilize thousands of processors.
A measure of the economic impact is that the supercomputer market is now billion a year and the most powerful models cost million each.
Because the computer of today is as powerfull as the supercomputer of 25 years ago, it is believed that the supercomputer of today will become the computer of tomorrow.
Emeagwali is the only computer scientist or mathematician to be extolled at length by a United States president in a televised speech (August 26, 2000). Bill Clinton called him “one of the great minds of the Information Age†and "the Bill Gates of Africa."
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RICHARD BRANSON
I think this is a great opportunity to share with you the first person that inspires my world so much. I know that goin by the name RICHARD BRANSON, it will sound very strange to some people but with the name VIRGIN ATLANTIC not everyone will be ignorant of him. He is one of the great Idols whose life had inspired and propelled my Vision to great to high level. His history in life thought me of a great determination with a great pursuit as he said "I could go and live on an island. The challenge of learning and trying to do some thing better than in the past is irresistible."
Born in 1950, Richard Branson grew up in a traditional family and received his education at Stowe School, where he established a national magazine entitled Student at the age of sixteen.
He started a Student Advisory Centre at 17, aiming to help young people. At twenty years old, he founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer and a short while later, he opened a record shop in Oxford Street, London. In 1972, a recording studio was built in Oxfordshire where the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded "Tubular Bells", later released in 1973.
The first album of Virgin Records went on to sell more than five million copies. At the age of 27, Richard signed The Sex Pistols to the Virgin Records label after the group was turned down by every label in Great Britain.
Over the years, he signed many superstar names including Steve Winwood, Paula Abdul, Belinda Carlisle, Genesis, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Simple Minds, The Human League, Bryan Ferry, Culture Club, Janet Jackson, and The Rolling Stones. As is evident, Branson managed to turn the Virgin Music Group into a giant success.
In 1992, the Virgin Music Group -- record labels, music publishing and recording studios -- was sold to Thorn EMI in a $1 billion US deal.
The interests of Virgin Group have since expanded into international "Megastore" music retailing, books and software publishing, film and video editing facilities, and clubs and hotels throughout 100 companies in 15 countries.
Virgin Atlantic Airways, started in 1984, is now the second largest British long haul international airline and operates a fleet of Boeing 747 aircrafts to New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Orlando, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, Dallas, and Tokyo.
The airline was founded on the concept of offering competitive and high quality first class and economy services. The airline holds many major airline awards and recently earned "Airline of the Year Award" for the third consecutive year.
In 1993, the combined sales of Virgin Group Companies exceeded $1 billion US. In addition to his own business activities, Branson is a trustee of several charities, including The Healthcare Foundation, a leading healthcare charity responsible for the launch of a health education campaign named Parents Against Tobacco, aiming to limit tobacco advertisements and sponsorships in sports.
Since 1985, Richard has actively engaged in his vocations and been involved in a number of record-breaking land and air speed and distance attempts.
In 1986, his boat, "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II," rekindled the spirit of the Blue Riband by crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the fastest recorded time ever.
One year later, the hot air balloon called the "Virgin Atlantic Flyer" was the first hot air balloon ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and was the largest ever flown at 2.3 million cubic feet capacity, reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph.
In 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada, the furthest distance of 6,700 miles, again breaking all existing records with speeds of up to 245 mph in a balloon measuring 2.6 million cubic feet.
Richard is currently in the midst of preparations to attempt a world-record setting, round-the-world hot air balloon crossing. The trip was scheduled to commence from Marrakesh North Africa early in 1997.
Richard lives in London and Oxfordshire and is married with two children.
Quite a life isn't it?
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